Bangalore Flyovers & Grade Separators

Does any body know the progress of the elavated expressway to ec ? Any photos ? cheers, kgv

"Abbe , saale , lathi oopar karo , put the lathi up. These were the memorable first words I heard on the historic occasion of the opening of the 27.5 km Delhi-Gurgaon Controlled Access Highway on the eve of Republic Day. It was history in the making, not just for the National Capital Region but for all of India. For the highway was like one of those epic Cecil B Demille productions, which took years in the making, cost a zillion, and featured a cast of thousands. The highway had taken five years to build (two years over the scheduled time of completion) at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore (almost double the original estimate). Not just Delhi and Gurgaon, but all of India held its breath in anticipation of the opening of the highway, which - along with the Nano - augured a new hi-tech dawn for India. For the highway boasted state-of-the-art, international standard signage and illumination. It did not, admittedly, boast a sufficiency of state-of-the-art (more like state-of-the-dearth) pedestrian overbridges and underpasses, with the result that over 25 people had got themselves run over and killed trying to cross the highway, but, hey, you know what they say about not being able to make an omelette - let alone a great big whopping highway - without breaking a few eggs. And what were a few eggs compared to a wonder of the modern world like the 32-lane toll plaza - the biggest in all Asia - at the Delhi-Gurgaon border? It was at this toll plaza that I heard those famous first words: Abbe, saale, lathi oopar karo . The speaker was the driver of a 3-wheeler vehicle locally known as a 'Tumpoo' and the 'lathi' he referred to was the electronically operated, state-of-the-art crossbar, which was in the lowered position, disenabling the Tumpoo driver's egress from Gurgaon and ingress into Delhi. Understandably irate at this 'lathi' barring his progress, the Tumpoo driver demanded of the toll booth attendant that the non-cooperative item in question immediately be raised, at pain of physical assault, if necessary. The toll attendant tried to explain that a) no Tumpoos were allowed on the highway; and b) that the Tumpoo driver was anyway in the wrong lane, this being the exclusive lane for the special, remote-sensorable Tag Card which the Tumpoo did not possess, and that the Tumpoo driver should go to one of the Cash lanes to pay the toll, which would cause the crossbar to rise and enable the Tumpoo driver to continue his journey. Unimpressed by such Jesuistical nitpicking about Tag lanes and Cash lanes, the Tumpoo driver responded with a terse: Teri Tag-Vag ki aisi-ki-taisi (Roughly translatable as 'Go stuff your Tag-Vag') and, disembarking from his vehicle, began to wrestle with the recusant 'lathi' to get it out of his way. Two uniformed security men jumped on the Tumpoo driver and began to wrestle with him, to stop him wrestling with the 'lathi'. The drivers of sundry other vehicles blocked by the Tumpoo joined in the fray, though it was not clear on whose side they were, the Tumpoo driver's or the security guards'. Anyway, the 'lathi' succumbed to primal muscle-power, and with a state-of-the-art groan of defeated machinery bent sideways, at which point the Tumpoo driver disengaged from the melee and equanimously continued his interrupted travels. It was an epiphanic episode. For it showed that the lathi - that emblem of rural realpolitik and feudal proprietary rights as summed up in the succinct phrase ' Jiski lathi uski bhains' (He who has the lathi has the buffalo) - has been reincarnated as the blunt instrument of negotiation between the latter-day landlordism of the sarkar and the countervailing amiable anarchy of the general citizenry. Which is why we can have state-of-the-art highways, and any number of other state-of-the-art state-of-the-arts. But in the end we'll always be left with the short end of the stick. Another word for the lathi."